Nanoparticle Enhanced SPR on the Gold Nanoslits for Label-free Detection of Nucleic Acid Biomarkers

Early detection and diagnosis of cancer has proven to be crucial in maximizing the efficacy of currently available therapy.As such, a great deal of effort has been directed at developing methods for sensitive and rapid non-invasive detection ofbiomarkers at the early stage of the cancer. This work focuses on developing a sensing platform for sensitive and labelfreedetection of nucleic acid biomarkers for diagnostic applications. The method utilizes functionalized magneticnanoparticles (MNPs) for signal enhancement in conjunction with surface plasmon resonance (SPR) on gold nanoslits.Gold nanoslits that provide SPR sensing were fabricated by nanoimprinting lithography on polycarbonate (PC) film. Thefilm was integrated with a microfluidic chip to form the SPR detection chip. In this paper we demonstrate the applicationof this sensing platform for detection of mRNA hnRNP B1 that is overexpressed in lung cancer tissue in the early stageof cancer and can be found in the serum and plasma of lung cancer patients.

Keywords:

Nanoslit SPR , Biomarker detection